A man walks in Kingston, Jamaica, as Hurricane Melissa approaches on Tuesday.

Hurricane Melissa was expected to bring catastrophe as it makes landfall in Jamaica with storm surges, flash floods and landslides in the worst storm to hit the Caribbean island this century, a UN weather official said on Tuesday.

The Category 5 storm, the strongest possible on the Saffir-Simpson scale, will bring wind gusts of over 300 km per hour and widespread devastation to the island, where authorities have ordered mandatory evacuations.

“It’s a catastrophic situation expected in Jamaica,” the World Meteorological Organization’s tropical cyclone specialist Anne-Claire Fontan told a Geneva press briefing. “For Jamaica, it will be the storm of the century for sure.”

Storm surges of up to four meters were e

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